The cloud-based software utilises optical character recognition, artificial intelligence and machine learning methods for commercial lease abstraction, saving time in a document-intensive commercial lease management environment at up to 30 minutes a lease.

Developed in partnership with CSIRO’s Data61, the software will have key features such as a clause locator and highlighter for locating key text within leases and contracts, Lease verification, due diligence and exception reporting and identification and comparison of clauses across a portfolio of leases.

"It will redefine the way businesses manage leases and in fact can have application for any form of standardized contract. For head offices of franchised businesses and companies managing large portfolios, the savings in time and productivity are significant," LeaseInfo founder and Accurait creator Simon Fonteyn said.

The platform works by reading lease contracts and scanned data, and stores key information in a database. This allows tagging and linking of information across different documents, which can then be exported to asset management software.

While anticipating that its initial market is in Australia, LeaseInfo also has plans to launch internationally by 2019.

“In Australia alone, there would be easily over one million commercial leases transacted annually, including equipment and vehicles,” Simon Fonteyn, founder and managing director of LeaseInfo and Accurait, said.

“Manual lease abstraction is not only laborious, it can also be expensive and error-prone. Accurait presents an automated solution using highly advanced contract reading technology and not only saves both time and money, it reduces the risk of error. The impact will be significant for the retail sector, with 95 per cent of Australian retailers operating out of leased premises,” he added.

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